The Second Mrs. Astor(47)

“Oh, no,” Madeleine said, rousing. “I’m so happy to see you again. It’s lucky for us you were on your way through to Newport and the train was delayed. We’re glad for the company, honestly.”

She heard the tremble in her voice, just barely noticeable, and closed her lips tight to swallow it down.

Margaret lifted her cup of tea, examined the spiral of steam that rose from its surface. “It’s a big house, Mrs. Astor.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Madeleine dropped her gaze to her lap. The wind outside quickened, rotated, became a gust that groaned against the windowpanes.

Margaret uncrossed her ankles. “Don’t worry. The place will grow on you, I’m sure. It can be rough sliding into someone else’s territory at first, even if they’re long gone. Ghosts in the walls, I guess. The artwork, the furniture, even the pattern of the china.” She cocked her head, smiled at the old-fashioned peonies circling her cup. “Someone else’s ideas about living, sleeping, entertaining, manifested all around you. But you’re tough, Madeleine. Bright and tough. You wouldn’t be where you are right now if you weren’t. You’ll make this place your own.”

“I hope so.”

“Hire a decorator,” Margaret suggested. “Spread some of your own soul across these rooms. This isn’t Europe, after all. We’re allowed to stir things up here. In fact, we’re expected to. Not everything in America is chiseled in eternal stone.”

“A decorator?” Madeleine looked up, around. There was so much gilt. “I hadn’t thought . . .”

“Well, think it. Change things, invite people over, all those four hundred lovely, lovely people, and show them what you can do. Show them who you are.”

“We were considering a luncheon.” Madeleine pinched at the cuff of her thick plum sweater, rolling the wool between her fingers. Why was she always so cold now? It seemed this winter in New York was the coldest of her life so far, and it had hardly even snowed. Just day after day of bitter blue sky, anemic thin sun. That wind. “Nothing too elaborate, of course. Only something close enough to Christmas to be festive, but not enough to intrude on anyone’s plans, but . . .”

“Yes?”

“Not many have responded favorably. Quite a few people are already so busy with the holidays.”

Margaret raised both eyebrows, said nothing. Tasted her Ceylon.

Madeleine rushed on. “And doubtless many will be traveling, like you. Visiting family near and far. It was all very last minute, anyway. Jack and I have hardly been in town long enough to catch our breath.”

Margaret stood, walked to the table that held the tea service. In the giant square of iced light from the window, she waved away the footman who approached, pouring herself another cup.

“Do you know what they call themselves back in Denver?”

“Who?”

Margaret added a thin stream of milk to her cup, lifting the creamer expertly high and then low, her eyes narrowed, before placing it back upon the silver tray. “The elite. The leaders of Colorado high society.”

Madeleine looked at her, waiting.

“‘The Sacred Thirty-Six.’” She returned to her chair. “The thirty-six best families of the Rockies. The thirty-six who determine who is good, who is bad, and who is merely uninvited. At least here it’s only a number, and a bigger one at that. Four hundred. Plenty of room, so to speak. Out there, it’s only thirty-six, and they had to throw in a sacred. To make it all so much more special.”

“Are you a member?” Madeleine asked, but thought she already knew the answer.

Margaret smiled; for the first time, the secret mirth about her vanished, replaced with something fiercer, darker. She swirled the tea in her cup. “I was a shop girl. Did you know that, Miss Madeleine?”

“No.” She was genuinely surprised. Nothing about Margaret Brown, no matter her plain speaking, indicated anything but a background of culture and education.

“Came west from Missouri as a girl to meet my brother in Colorado. He was a miner, and we were going to make our fortune out in Leadville. But women weren’t allowed to mine, not for gold or silver or anything else. It was thought to be bad luck. I ended up in a dry goods store, and I was grateful for it, because it was decent work. Steady work, even though the pay was peanuts. Every day, I dealt with real folks in real life. Folks without a penny left to their names, desperate for a speck of anything to send home to their families back east. Desperate for any brush with Lady Luck. It turned out that Lady Luck, in the end, noticed me. I was a poor girl who fell in love with a poor man, and married him. A man who later on became rich from gold. I was nineteen when we wed. He was thirty-one, days from thirty-two.” She shot Madeleine a glance from beneath those dark lashes. “Did you know that?”

“No,” she said again.

“Nineteen. Thirty-two. But it’s different out there, you know. Out west. Fewer women by far, at least in the far-flung mountains and plains. No one raised much of a fuss about it. We were happy and poor, and then we were happy and rich. And after that . . .”

She drifted off, the tea half-lifted in her hand, forgotten. Past the closed doors of the morning room, there were maids conversing, very low. There were footsteps, and the muted, solid sound of well-oiled doors opening, closing. Letting in and out the ghosts.